Neoco’s blog - keep up to date with the best digital marketing agency in the world!

It’s only been available for one weekend but already 1 million new iPhone’s have been sold. And, although the queues were not as long as those of the original release, figures show that despite this, the sales of iPhones were much quicker this time round (it took 74 days to sell the first 1 million original iPhones).

So, what a great start for the iPhone 3G. Especially considering that the new iPhone owners have already downloaded 10 million iPhone applications - which is even more impressive when you consider that there were only around 500 applications available at launch. These figures once again reinforce the belief that users don’t see the iPhone as just another phone - it is another whole platform.

What do you think of the iPhone 3G and the available apps? Let us know…

Bored with Twitter? Fed up with Twinkle? Step it up a level and stream video direct from your mobile phone to the web using Qik!

The core idea is that you download a small application onto your phone, sign up to qik.com and then simply stream whatever you fancy direct to the Internet. Videos can be watched live or at a later date via qik.com.

To make it happen you’ll need a pretty modern phone though. Windows Mobile and iPhone support has just been added to Symbian OS, covering many modern handsets, but still leaving many needing an upgrade (like myself).  Qik also advise that you get yourself an unlimited data plan.  I imagine this is a wise step.  Qik is probably the sort of app that would ruin someone on pay-as-you-go fairly swiftly.

Right now it all seems pretty fresh.  The website looks sparkly and web 2.0 enough, but the videos seem to show people dipping their toes into the service.  There are lots of short clips of people videoing their computers / desks / the ceiling etc..!

The functionality is all there, however, and well layered. There isn’t that feeling of being overwhelmed that you sometimes get when confronted with just too much functionality. Most of this is through the clever use of tabs and a well laid out, crisp design.

It has all the syndication features you’d expect from a descent app. You can access user’s video feeds via RSS.  You can even make Qik update your Twitter feed every time you post a video!

Fresh from securing $3 million in funding, Qik seems to be securing it’s status as the market leader in live video streaming direct from mobile phones.  It will be interesting to see how the service grows and blossoms as it moves beyond the early-adopter phase.

PS: Benn can I have an iPhone please so I can play with Qik?

Nokia has bought Plazes for an undisclosed amount. Plazes is a German location-aware social network site,  which basically lets users know where their friends are.

As discussed at mashup*’s Being Digital last week, location is a really hot topic right now, with everyone in the industry having a go at creating a location/mobile/social network mashup (although most do seem to be getting it all wrong!) and this will no doubt increase even further with the iPhone 3G. Predictions can easily be made that whoever is able to master this and create a useful service with an easy to use interface - and most importantly, of course, monetises this - is going to reap in the rewards. Nokia’s acquisition shows that they too are on the path to creating a location-aware service.

While many users are looking forward to use location based services, it appears that many aren’t keen to expose their location and trade in their privacy, and this will inevitably raise concerns for the success of these services. Apparently, Plazes’ CEO Felix Petersen was caught somewhere else than he was supposed to be - and I’m sure many of us wouldn’t like to be put in the situation where our partner/friends/family/colleagues can see where we are all the time. Think about that sneaky ’sick’ day at work when you have tickets to an event that you can’t just can’t miss! Or when you want a quiet, relaxing night in at home, so you tell your friend that you can’t babysit because you are going out. Or when you tell your partner you have to work late, but you go out with your friends instead. (By the way, I don’t do any of these things…they are just examples…)

Whatever users think about location-aware services, they are definitely something that we are going to be hearing a lot more about over the rest of 08.

A great article over at Venture Beat talking about Adobe’s plans to develop an Open Standards Flash Player for use across all digital media channels. This is a great development as by dropping certain license fees it ensures greater take up, which makes it easier to deliver brand experiences coherently across media channels. Shame there is still no news of a decent Flash player on the iPhone but I guess we can live in hope.

“Just in case you think Adobe’s Flash Player (which powers YouTube and an enormous number of other sites) isn’t ubiquitous enough, Adobe is pushing for even greater adoption from developers and designers. Through an initiative the company is calling the Open Screen Project, Adobe will lift a number of restrictions on Flash in the hopes creating even greater usage, especially on web-enabled devices.”

Read the full article here.

News for all you iPhone users out there:  Google News is now available for iPhone and iPod Touch, and it looks really nice (as you can see in the image)

To reach it from your device, you can either:

- Go to www.google.com, click on the “more” tab and follow the link to Google News
- Go to www.google.com and do a search, then click on the News link at the top of the screen
- Go directly to Google News at news.google.com in your browser

According to WSJ, Adobe are going to develop Flash for the iPhone. And they’re not just going to use the existing Flash Lite - they’re going to develop a new version (or tweak the existing one) especially for the iPhone.

Adobe’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen had said: “We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone…We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves.”

It seems Adobe’s on a roll. First, they signed a deal with Microsoft, who licensed Flash for Windows Mobile-sporting phones. Then, they posted fantastic financial results for the year. And now, they’re probably going to conquer this last, crucially significant, corner of the smartphone market.

Apple has just announced that it has licensed the Microsoft ActiveSync protocol. This will make it much easier for iPhone users to access their emails (as easy as using a Blackberry) and elimate one of the key barriers that Apple face in addressing the business market.

It’s great news for all business people out there who have been dying to trade their reliable Blackberry for a cooler iPhone. It will also make the iPhone more appealing to people buying a phone for personal use, but would also like to access some business applications, such as work email.

Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, has recently demonstrated how to activate and set up the Exchange function on an iPhone - the entire set up can be done over the air, allowing email, contacts and calendar information to be automatically pushed to a device.

Since last week, Benn has been raving on about the BBC iPlayer on his iPhone, but what is it?…

BBC’s iPlayer is their online on-demand TV service, which allows users to download or stream any BBC content which has been broadcast during the last 7 days, and watch it on their computers - or in Benn’s case his iPhone. As it’s the BBC, the iPlayer is free to use. It uses peer-to-peer technology for the download service, so that content can be downloaded from the nearest point in the network and not always directly from BBC servers.

The iPlayer first came out in summer 2007 but it didn’t have its proper launch until Christmas Day 2007. Within the first 7 weeks of the launch, 17 million programmes were streamed or downloaded and recently over 500,000 programmes were streamed or downloaded in one day! In January, around 2.2 million people used the iPlayer.

The iPlayer website has recently had a facelift to add extra functionality - the 10 most popular programmes, ‘Last Chance’ for programmes about to expire, and ‘Recently Added’, which is updated every 10 minutes! We think that the iPlayer really shows how hard the BBC is working to build up its online and digital presence. Over the past year the BBC has signed deals with IBM, YouTube and Apple’s iTunes and it has recently announced that it will be collaborating with ITV and Channel 4 on a shared on-demand TV service called Kangaroo.

However, since its release there have been a couple of issues with the iPlayer. When the download version of iPlayer initially came out, it only worked on Microsoft Windows XP and many people were unhappy about it excluding a significant number of people not using XP. In response, the BBC has consistently said it wants to offer a multiplatform iPlayer and has already made the download version compatible with Vista, with a Mac version promised by the end of 2008. The BBC also has plans to broaden access even further, making it available on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

There has also been concern expressed from broadband networks, about the sheer volume of traffic that iPlayer will ultimately generate. Tiscali suggested that content producers like the BBC should be made to pay to fund broadband network upgrades to prevent it from crippling them and Ofcom has said there is the possibility that the ISP-content provider business model may need to change in the future to fund the huge growth in digital content.

LinkedIn have just announced the upgrade of their FireFox toolbar. And this weekend, they also announced the deployment of their Mobile version of the site. This will allow all mobile device users access to the LinkedIn, including Blackberry and iPhone users - Benn can confirm it looks great on his iPhone

To ensure your compatibility with your device, simply log in to m.linkedin.com.

The new Mobile LinkedIn also includes improved support for non-English languages, including French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese. A LinkedIn engineer, Jerry Luk gives a demo of the new mobile service with this YouTube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy1cTWXlF0c

Great Future of Mobile event today at iMAX (nr Waterloo). Nice event. Lots of somebodies and a few nobodies (no-one from Apple to discuss iPhone). Topics covered: iPhone (Dur!) Monetising Mobile Mobile 2.0 (I really f*cking hate that 2.0 terminology!) Mobile 3.0 (OK, this is taking the p*ss now) and much more. Laura has a full write up of some key sessions - ideal for a lowdown on what’s happening or next in mobile.